Girl or Boy? All will be revealed...

Today was the big day! Ultrasound day!! As well as this being the 'are all the limbs in the right place?' test, it was also the day to find out if baby was a girl or a boy. And we got happy news! Everything looks perfect... it's growing great, and has all of the limbs and organs it should. Phew! And we found out what kind it was...

Last time we found out and just called people to let them know. This time I thought we should announce it with some fanfare, because this is the most exciting point in baby's life so far, and the next big excitement won't be for quite some time yet. We planned a cake-reveal party. After our appointment I baked a cake that was either pink or blue inside, and our local family gathered together to witness the cake cutting...

We built the suspense... first we forced our guests to eat pizza and make small talk. They also had to make official guesses beforehand...

(Laurie and Nate were joining us from Utah via Skype, so they got to participate in the fun too.)

We showed the lovely photos that we were given in the afternoon (there are more on flickr)...

(The face is in profile, and the blob by its chin is a hand... it has another one on the end of the other arm too. Yay!)

We gathered everyone together for the grand finale. Ben was busy holding the 3-D picture up to the webcam for Laurie to see...

He wanted to be sure Laurie could see the picture, so seconds before the big cake moment he asks "can you see her?"

Yep, you read that right. Her. It's a girl. Oh well, so much for fanfare. Lets just cut the cake so we can have dessert.

So Fiona's going to have a little sister. Ben's going to be totally outnumbered and we might need to add another bathroom ;-)

And here's the updated tummy picture... I promise, it's starting to become more baby and less twixes. I had to switch to mini-twixes because it was getting out of control...

Yay for healthy baby girls!

And these people are reproducing...

There's an online forum that I check out from time to time called the bump. They have pregnancy information, and various message boards for women who are pregnant, have children, in various family situations, etc. There's a large amount of stupidity, ignorance, and general insanity that you see posted by people on a daily basis, and it's usually both entertaining and informative to check in from time to time and see what's being discussed...

Well last night, innocently sandwiched between posts with such titles as "Welcome back Rebecca" and "Anyone else having an all nighter?" was this gem...

Any truth in this........

Saw this post on a community forum today, and was wondering if there is any truth to it. Anyone know?

Obama's democratic party is considering an option for the public health care that involve what is called "...late term Post Birth Abortions..." This would allow for the abortion of babies after birth, up to 96 weeks after birth. WOW!!! That is almost a 2 year old! I believe it will be done just like partial birth abortions by sucking out the brains with a tube. But this is said to require some anasthetic.

Seriously, you have to ask a public message board if it's possible that the president is considering making it legal to murder two year old children? Good grief! That alone is bad enough. But what really took the cake on this one is the responses. You can hope that maybe the original post was trying to stir up some drama, or be funny somehow, but the responses she got were completely sincere... responses such as...

Is there any news source to back this up? It sounds bogus...

Um, no. There is no news source that supports the assertion that Obama is planning to make it legal to murder 2 year olds.

Ive been searching and havent found anything regaurding this on the web, so it is probably bogus.

Yep... probably. Can't be sure though.

I just googled it and there is nothing that comes up saying that Obama is proposing anything of the like.

Well if you're able to use Google, there's no need to actually use your brain.

If it isn't made up that's diabolical and I regret voting for the man.

Me too, anonymous internet idiot, me too.

And my favourite by far...

That seems like such an extreme idea that I struggle to imagine it's true, but I'm in NZ and have no idea if it is true or not.

If it is true, are they talking about babies with certain health complications? Or just any parent who says, "nah I don't really want to do this anymore?"

The latter just seems so ridiculous with so many people keen to adopt.

Yeah, because if we heard that John Key, New Zealand's smiley faced prime minister, was proposing that it should be legal to murder two year olds, I'd consider that it might be true because I don't live there, so really, how should I know. SERIOUSLY?!! And of course, the fact that people may want to adopt these children is what makes it ridiculous. Someone needs to check the drinking water down there in New Zealand, because it appears to be turning people insane.

I'm horrified that not only are these people all reproducing, but their children will be Fiona's classmates. Good luck, public education system, you've got your work cut out for you.

The best thing about being a grown up!

The best thing about being a grown up... is making a batch of brownies at 10pm, and then being allowed to eat them from the inside out because the middle ones are the best...

And the best thing about being pregnant is eating as many as you like in one sitting. Mmm brownies.

Fiona's newest dance move

Fiona and I go to 'Moving and Grooving' class every Tuesday. We sing songs, do dances, play with ribbons and instruments and a big parachute, and have a super fun time for 45 minutes. Then we go home and take a big nap! Well, all those classes are finally paying off, and Fiona has mastered yet another awesome dance move!

Sometimes she gets a little dizzy and topples over (as you can see), but she just pops back up again. This new move is SO FUN that people nearby just can't help but join in!

Silly Daddy...

Fiona this week...

I feel like in the last couple of weeks Fiona has started to really act like a person. For example, you can no longer say the word 'outside' in this house because she'll drop whatever she's doing and run for the back door, where she'll sit and whine until you take her outside. O.k., this may be something Brodie taught her, but the important point is that she understands the word 'outside' and is aware of what needs to happen for her to get there.

She LOVES to be outside. She plays on her little swing/slide set...

She hangs out with her friends...

And gets into various types of mischief...

Yes, our back garden is far from child-proofed!

But her most recent thing is that she likes to feed herself with a fork. She has a hard time spearing the food, so I help a little with that, and then she loves to dip whatever is on the fork in something (usually ketchup) and feed it to herself.

Well tonight she took it one step further and insisted on feeding herself yogurt. She did a surprisingly neat job considering that she refused to wear her bib and sometimes has been known to miss her mouth completely when attempting to feed herself. What a big girl! Here's the video... enjoy!

Snow Patrol... or "Proof that we're old"

A couple of months ago I heard that Snow Patrol were coming to Minneapolis, and I was very excited! Unfortunately the venue they were playing at had no chairs. I didn't know there was a chair shortage here, but we decided that since we're old now, and one of us has an extra human inside her, we'd need chairs! (Proof of oldness #1) Luckily that place closed down (probably because no one went there due to the lack of chairs) and we got tickets for the new venue that had numbers on them that told you where your seat was!

Thursday was the big night! I dropped Fiona off at Aunty Cathy's and then Ben and I went downtown to have dinner beforehand. After polishing off the word's largest portion of Nachos (looked something like this, but larger) and a bowl of mac and cheese, we were ready to waddle over.

The opening band was the Plain White T's, who I thought I might have heard of, probably because Ali likes them, but could definitely not name anything they sang (proof of oldness #2). But it turns out that they sing that "Hey there Delilah" song! Who'd have guessed? Not me! Because I'm old.

Snow Patrol started and immediately every single person in the section in front of us stood up, and remained standing for the first 2 songs. After I hefted myself into a standing position I spotted a section a little further over where everyone was still sitting, with 2 or 3 rows still empty. We were in the balcony, so there was no one in front of them blocking the view either. We moved over there, and sat down, and it was much better! (Proof of oldness #3).

Quite soon after we sat down, we noticed some interesting characters in the area around us... like 'kissy couple' in front of us. They seemed to be on date number 2, or maybe 3, and they spent the entire time kissing and fondling each other. Ben and I laughed to ourselves, smug in the knowledge that they'll only like each other that much for a very short time, and soon she'll be nagging him about his dirty socks (proof of oldness #4). Across the aisle was 'drunken middle aged man' who spent the first part of the show trying (and repeatedly failing) to dial a number on his phone and the remainder dancing in a wild, flailing, but completely heartfelt way. Proof of oldness # 5: I was so glad I wasn't going to wake up with his headache the next day!

The band were great! They were having some technical problems and the lead singer (Gary)'sguitar only worked about half of the time causing them to completely rearrange the set list to do the songs where he doesn't play the guitar during guitar down times. He seemed a little shaken by the problems and later admitted (after a very long musical introduction and a brief conference with the guitarist) that he'd completely forgotten how to sing/play "Open your Eyes" and after the show he was going to be "taken to an old folks home to be fed mushy food through a straw to match his mushy brain". Despite the hiccups we really enjoyed the show, and I think it was a more personal experience for the audience because the band had to make things up as they went along!

I forgot to bring my camera, so in case you're not familiar with Snow Patrol, here's a video of one of my favourite songs...

So we had a great time, despite the painful realisation that I'm an old, old lady. We spent the reat of the weekend reconvering from our exciting excursion, and now I suppose we're ready to have another Monday...

Renaissance Festival Adventure

On Saturday Ben, Fiona and I joined some friends for a trip to the Renaissance Festival. According to Wikipedia, the Renaissance Festival is:

"an interactive outdoor event which focuses on recreating the look and feel of a fictional 16th Century "England-like" fantasy kingdom"

That sums it up quite nicely! You will meet all sorts of people dressed up in costumes (even the people who go to the fair love to get all dressed up) and there are many different stages which have different shows going on that you can stop by and watch, as well as random performances in the middle of the street.

Fiona doesn't have a very long attention span, so we saw parts of a comedy show, a crazy fire juggling act, and saw a game where the crowd could pay for tomatoes to throw at a man in stocks while he yelled insults at them. We saw a variety of different singing groups, and even elephants and camels that you could ride on!

Another appeal of the Fair is the food. A significant portion of it is deep fried, and 99% of it is extremely unhealthy. One of the most popular choices is the giant roasted turkey leg, which you hold in your hand and tear apart with your teeth caveman-style.

(this picture is not from the fair, I 'borrowed' it from another blog)

We had a hard time choosing, but in the end Ben and I sampled loaded potato skins, cheese curds (battered, deep fried cheese curd nuggets), and I had a soft pretzel with cheese dip. When you consider the size of the entire list, it was really a pathetic attempt!

We took a break from the fun to let Fiona run around and play while the tired adults rested (the fair is huge, and we were exhausted!)

As soon as Ben sat down, Fiona claimed her spot...

Later in the day we attended a real live joust!

First there was a sword battle...

Then it was time for the joust!

The jouster we were rooting for whacked his opponent so hard that he broke his lance in half, but sadly he did not win.

Then it was time to go home. We all had a really fun time, and Fiona even slept in this morning because she was so completely worn out from all the excitement. Good times ;-)

Ticketmaster

Recently I bought tickets to see Snow Patrol, and was reminded that I really can't stand ticketmaster. I know I'm not alone in this. First of all, after you jump through all the hoops to find your tickets they challenge you with the world's most impossible captcha... I have such a hard time making out what those random letter strings are that I have found myself asking to be given the 'visually impaired' option instead.

To show you that I'm not exaggerating, here's a real captcha that I borrowed from ticketmaster...

Ok, the first word is bertram. Odd, but readable. What in the world is the second word? Is that first letter an 'r' or a tiny little 't'? What about that smudge in the middle? Or at the end? Is that half of an 'o'? Oh, but there's a dot hanging out above the 'n'... is that some kind of hint that there should be an 'i' in there somewhere? Aaaargh!!

Once you get past this part they start with their countdown timer... here are your tickets, do you want them? You have 8 seconds to decide... then... enter your credit card information... do it fast... you only have 53 1/2 seconds to do this...

This is the really hard part. When I bought tickets recently Fiona was hanging around, and I had to leave the computer unattended while I went to get my credit card. As soon as she saw her opening she swooped in and started randomly hitting keys... I'm yelling from the kitchen, where I'm trying to find the credit card that earlier she removed form my wallet and hid inside the rice krispies box... "nooooooo Fiona, please don't touch Mama's computer" and all the time the timer is counting 39... 38... 37...

I retrieved the credit card and returned to find that Fiona had attempted to complete the transaction but ticketmaster luckily hadn't accepted my name as "poookinuggg" so I was given another chance. Except now Fiona had realised that I was really trying to get something done, and was really really trying to "help" by hitting any key she could reach.

I managed to beat the deadline with a correctly spelled name and seconds to spare, and it told me my credit card would be charged, blah blah. At this point I just want it to be over. I'm battling with Fiona who is now repeatedly opening and closing my cd drive, and I need to move this computer out of her reach before it suffers permanent damage. I know how much the tickets were, it told me that in the very beginning when I asked it to only search for the very cheapest seats, so I'm just trying to get it done without further incident. And I thought everything was good, until I received my tickets and receipt in the mail today...

$31.03 in additional fees?! On top of tickets that only cost $55 to begin with?! Are you kidding me?!! Curse you Ticketmaster, curse you and your sneaky charges. But HAHA... I didn't pay $5 a ticket for the privilege of printing them at home using my own paper and ink, instead I requested that you mail me real tickets, which costs you money for paper, ink, envelopes, and postage, but bizarrely is the only ticket delivery option that they do not charge you for! I consider this to be a small victory for me in the shadow of a much larger victory for the great evil that is ticketmaster.

Can we band together and stop them? Or should we all just accept the fact that soon they'll be taking one of our kidneys as payment for the 'convenience' of buying our tickets from them?